Mar: Don't mind at all that you jumped in...you're my guru for all things wargaming!
Beefcake: As I told Mar recently, I bought that regiments box back when it came out when I played RPGs but not miniatures games. Jump ahead about 30 years, I found it still unopened in my basement, dusted it off, and it became my entre to tabletop miniatures gaming about a year ago.
midismirnoff: That's a fair question about the rules, and I don't mind discussing them at all. I counted around 22 different traits and four spells spread out across the two warbands, and you're right that each of these units has two to three traits. That was a personal choice, and they could conceivably have had no traits at all, or maybe just one. My experience is that the traits serve as a proxy for any number of things, from movement rates to particular weapons. For example, all movement is based on predefined lengths of short/medium/long. Units by default have a "medium" movement rating, but if you feel that the stubby legs of a dwarf should make it cover less ground when it moves than a human, then you give the dwarf the "short" trait to indicate this. If your unit wears plate mail, give it the "Heavily Armored" trait. Most traits result in fairly simple modifiers (positive or negative) to the base three characteristics (Quality, Combat, Movement) under certain circumstances. It's usually pretty easy to jot down a few words and numbers next to the unit's info to capture the trait's game effect, and many of them are simply self-explanatory. The "Long Bow" means the unit uses the longbow stats for firing ranges/modifiers (again using the exact same three basic measurements of short/medium/long as with movement). If the unit also has "Good Shot," they get a simple +1 to their Combat rolls when firing on the enemy. If they have "Fire Into Melee" they can fire at enemies who are engaged in melee with one of your own units (something prohibited under normal circumstances). I think the trick is to not get too carried away when creating your units and overloading them with too many traits. The system probably isn't ideal for folks who look to min/max units; the game can get thrown out of whack if somebody sets their mind to it. Fortunately, there are literally hundreds of pre-generated unit profiles in the published books to choose from that help keep play balanced. Personally, I find the system pretty elegant for fun skirmish games, especially if you like your games narrative based.
17 April 2021, 09:01:35 PM